Bush presides over lavish `pork' fest

How fitting that President Bush came to Illinois last week to sign a transportation authorization bill that may be the most lavish pork barbecue in history.

Illinois, the most politically corrupt state in the land. Illinois, where the smell of the pork a cookin' mixes with the stink of graft.

Where you can't get much done without someone who knows someone being "taken care of" with a contract, job or the cash contents of a plain brown envelope.

Where federal corruption indictments are raining down on the mighty and lowly of both political parties.

Where a lawyer indicted on charges that he tried to squeeze an $850,000 kickback from an out-of-state firm to land a juicy state contract allegedly and now famously explained: "This is how things are done in Illinois."

Into this bipartisan cesspool steps a grinning Bush to sign the bill that ladles out billions of taxpayers' dollars for thousands of suspect, odd, fishy and useless projects to help politicians of both parties please special interests and impress the voters back home (read: buy votes with our money).

Among them is a proposal to deck over the Eisenhower Expressway in Oak Park to make a rooftop park--an idea so loopy and so costly that its principal backers, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), must know it has no chance of getting done. But the $4.8 million contained in the bill to study the idea is itself a nice little slice of pork for someone who knows someone.

This and other similarly outrageous pork barrel projects in the bill quickly became the target of public ridicule. This made Bush and everyone else standing around him at the bill signing--Mayor Richard Daley, Gov. Rod Blagojevich and other pols--objects of scorn.

Who would put the president and leader of the supposedly frugal Republican Party in such a compromising situation? House Speaker and Illinois Republican Denny Hastert. Who would be so proud to have such bad legislation signed in his district? Denny Hastert. Who would think he has really impressed his constituents by showering them with a couple of hundred million for a highway that not everyone in his own district agrees is needed? Denny Hastert.

Let's not leave out Bush's political genius, Karl Rove, from the list of likely engineers of this buffoonery. And let's not leave out his pal, Illinois Republican honcho Robert Kjellander--the state party's own death wish. Kjellander ran the Bush re-election campaigns in Illinois and two other states. He lost all three. He's Illinois' longtime Republican national committeeman, who oversaw the party losing every statewide race save one three years ago. Last year, a state Republican Party that has produced such giants as Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen virtually gave up trying to find a viable Senate candidate. This debacle happened on Kjellander's watch.

And for this, he is inexplicably promoted to be the treasurer of the Republican National Committee.

Which means that the GOP is elevating Illinois' brand of snatch-and-grab politics to the national stage. As the Republican National Committee was selecting Kjellander as the guardian of its treasury, the feds subpoenaed records of some nifty deals that netted Kjellander $4.5 million in fees. The deals involved Kjellander finding a customer for a Washington investment firm, and that customer just happened to be the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois.

A former board member of that agency already has been indicted for allegedly extorting money from investment firms that were seeking board business. No connection, of course. Kjellander is accused of no legal wrongdoing. He has said he has done nothing wrong and that he's proud of his accomplishments as a lobbyist. But taxpayers may have a different view of insiders (he was former Gov. Jim Thompson's patronage chief) cashing in on their public service.

Being a top GOP dog, however, doesn't limit his business. In 2003, he received $809,000 from another investment company in Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich's $10 billion bond deal. Once inside, always inside, I guess.

Democrats, including Daley, have their own problems of sleaze. The difference is that the GOP has turned itself into the Cheshire cat, disappearing piece by piece before our very eyes. Until only the smile remains--like the one on Bush's face while signing the bill.

Bush should understand that a malaise is creeping his way from Illinois. That he doesn't do anything about it suggests that he's either blind or complicit.